Tears of Healing and Joy

Tears of Healing and Joy

Have you ever allowed unacceptable situations in your life to become acceptable?  If you allowed yourself to be taken hostage in a verbally or physically abusive relationship, undoubtedly you shed countless stinging and angry tears of healing and joy.

Have you ever made fear larger than life?  The debilitating fear of losing your first relationship imprisoned you to it.  Can you really be in love with someone who does not respect you?  Are you in a loving relationship if you constantly fear the loss of that relationship?  Constant fighting about who is right and wrong indicates an intractable incompatibility.  The absence of shared core principles equally and powerfully reflects little commonality.  Yet, an inferiority complex compels you to remain in a demeaning relationship.  Your familiarity with symbiotic and relational pathology convinces you it is better to stay and deal with a known entity.  Remaining, in this relational prison, results of making fear larger than life.

Relational hostages shed countless tears in silence. Because they are too ashamed to ask for help, they suffer in isolation.  Their victimizers recognize their humiliation.  These stinging tears of disappointment, anger and heartache emerge naturally when a person allows unacceptable insulting words and hurtful belittling deeds from someone who professes to love while simultaneously wounding his or her soul.  Hostages allow someone who claims to love them say, “F you” in one breath and then “I love you” in the next moment!  They wait for this particular scene to end; they contemplate leaving until fear erupts like a volcano.  Whether reading alone late into the night or lying awake in bed, relational hostages weep salty and stinging tears.

Wherein lies a relational hostage’s perpetual willingness to tolerate unacceptable behavior from a significant other?  Though they know they deserve better, these hostages do not believe it emotionally.  They suffer substantially with entrenched patterns of self-centered fear and self-denigrating behavior.  Their victimizers capitalize on their hostages self-sabotaging patterns.  Quite possibly, hostages grew up in an impoverished environment which lacked love, affirmation, consideration and encouragement in addition to money and material resources.  Thus, hostages are so grateful when anyone does something nice for them.  In very plain terms, hostages allow victimizers to give them a sip of water when the victimizer demands a glass of water.  Recognizing tenacious patterns wherein the hostage lacks self-dignity and self-respect is the first step toward a new life and a new freedom.

Ironically, when hostages witness this behavior in other couples, they begin to break loose from their imprisonment.  As hostages share with someone else their regrettable circumstances, they slowly but surely start the long and arduous process of shattering chains that previously imprisoned them.  Hostages cry tear of joy and emancipation.

Relational hostages face the challenge of forgiving themselves for allowing the abuse they suffer.  Why was I not stronger and braver?  How could I have permitted those things to be said and done to me?  Why did not the other person love me enough to treat me with the same respect and kindness I gave?  I hope he or she feels the same pain and humiliation I endured!  As hostages share their story of survival, they shed even more tears of healing and joy.  Having persevered through their ordeal and progressed toward a new life, hostages experience cleansing tears as they reflect upon divine favor and genuine human love of family and friends.  This process of self-discovery commences a new journey of unimaginable joys, mysteries and experiences.  Finally, they see internally what people who truly love them have seen for years.  Moreover, hostages now realize they deserve the love they have always wanted.  They find inner gravitas and chutzpah to demand it from the Universe and from anyone who claims to love them.  Most definitely, they no longer tolerate unacceptable words and deeds.  However, they must forgive themselves to embrace a whole new life.

As a consequence of self-forgiveness, hostages additionally forgive their victimizers.  Emotions dissipate and greater distance in time and geography separate hostages from their demeaning relationships.  They eventually accept the brokenness of their victimizers.  Perpetrators of verbal and emotional abuse struggle with issues of self-worth and self-respect.  Regrettably, they seek to bolster their self-esteem at the expense of other people.  They need a hostage to feel self-respect.  Interestingly, they do to others what they previously suffered.  Acknowledging the humanity and inclination toward self-centered behavior of victimizers is a fundamental step in the holistic process of healing.

Hostages heal as they experience greater self-acceptance and unapologetic self-expression.  They learn that they deserve.  They practice self-care as they have a very personal relationship with self.  They enjoy movies, dinner, shopping, walks and museums in solitude.  As they embrace a new life, hostages inevitably shed tears of healing and joy.